Random jottings about East Yorkshire local history and the countryside

Wednesday, 12 February 2014

A bit more Yorkshire dialect

I have just been out for a walk with Molly. There has been a light fall of snow overnight and the road was what could be described as 'slape' or slippery. I think it is the first snow I have seen this winter. All we have had is incessant rain and wind but at least here in the North we have not had the terrible floods which have inundated large areas of south west England.

But back to dialect. I recently wrote a brief article about Yorkshire dialect which was published in the Goole Times, the local paper. I reproduce it below.

Yorkshire talk

I often talk to older local people who have
lived in this area all their lives.And many
of those who have been brought up in
this area of Yorkshire still use, quite naturally, the local words and
expressions which would have been used by their ancestors.

Our Yorkshire dialect is sadly dying out as
we all listen to the same TV and radio programmes and families are much more
mobile so that they often live far away from where they were brought up.

But some words and phrases survive and their
use can sometimes be traced back to the early
Norse settlers who came here from Scandinavia, before the Norman Conquest.

For example locally children are often referred
to as 'bairns', a word which dates back to when the Vikings lived in Yorkshire
- their word for a child was 'barn'.

Other common local words which have a
Scandinavian origininclude 'laiking' or
'larkin' [playing],'lug' [as in carry
something], 'midden' [rubbish tip or dungheap],'rive at' [as in pull at], 'slape' [slippery], 'spretch' [as in eggs
cracking just before hatching].

AndYorkshire farmers will describe a young female sheep as a gimmer [ from
the Old Norse 'gymbr'].

I had an East Riding village childhood and
have tried to pick out words which I either use or have heard used.
Sometimesdialect dictionaries list
words which have long fallen out of use or which were only maybe used in a
mining or mill area.

The problem too is realising what is
dialect and you only find that out when you use a word outside Yorkshire and
people look at you a bit oddly and ask what it means.

So I have had 'trouble' when describing a
ball of string as being 'taffled up',asking someone to 'rozzle up the fire' [ I think this is from my father
who came from Driffield], 'side thetable/ pots' or 'mash the tea'.

Many dialect expressions refer to the
occupations of those who use them. So in this area we have a lot of farming and rural
words and phrases although they are not the same as those used further west and
north.

Here are some I have heard recently:

"It were wick with fleas" [a dead
hedgehog picked up by a dog - 'wick' means alive although I have also heard
someone ask if a cable was 'wick' [live].

A farmer might talk about 'leading hay' [moving
it from field to barn] and being held up because 'it's siling down" [raining very heavily
- a 'sile' was a coarse sieve used in the dairy] and someone who has been
outside in the weather might come in 'fair nithered' or 'starved'[ both mean very cold'] and 'wet
as thack' [ thatch]. When the work began someone might take out the 'drinkings'
[the refreshments taken out to field workers] which in some areas were known as
'lowance'.

If a field was wetsomeone might say 'It's carr land"[land which is low lying and prone to be wet]
and this same word is often used in names - there are many Carr Lanes about.

I have not included a translation of the
phrases above -maybe someone would like
to send one in and also any other Yorkshire phrases I have not mentioned.

In fact you might be surprised at how many
words and phrases you use which in other parts of England might need
translating.

So far I have not even touched on typical
Yorkshire behaviour - the deadpan comment for example of a Hull bus driver this
weekend who told me ' I'm not giving change today luv'before he handed me mine with a grin.

And of course the stock answer to the
polite query 'How are you?'. A Yorkshire person rarely replies 'Very well,
thank you' - he or she will usually say 'Oh, not so bad'.

Despite being taken to task by a dialect expert who wrote an erudite reply to my article explaining the complex origins of some of the words and suggesting that our dialect is not dying out, only evolving, I shall continue collecting interesting words and phrases I hear in conversation.

After all how many young people will tweet about it being 'Black ower Bill's mother's' [there is a black cloud and it looks like rain] or send a text sharing the joke "What's worse than finding a 'mawk' in an apple?" "Finding half a mawk"? [ a mawk is a maggot]

I actually think that as I have been writing this I have probably proved my point. My word processing program has littered my words with red underlining and has corrected several of the words for me. Writing dialect is a challenge in modern times.

6 comments:

Hello Susan,I found this post really interesting. I've often wondered about Yorkshire dialect and the origins of words. I remember using the term "taffled up" when living in London and being asked what on earth I was talking about! Slape, larking, siling down, chimley etc all used frequently by my family and friends in East Yorkshire.I still enjoy "dipping into" your Eastrington and Howden books. (I met you last summer at the Eastrington show and we've communicated in the past via email.Kind regards,Rebecca

Reading this reminded me of when I worked alongside a Southern colleague. She saw me in the staffroom one day and I was rubbing my ankle, she asked what I had done and I told her I had cockled over, the look on her face was a picture, she had never heard this expression before and don't think she believed it was a 'proper' word. Later I googled it and it said it came from cock fighting, they often tied one of the poor cockerel's legs up! Cockled over...

Have just en-lightened a colleague about the word SPRETCH whilst awaiting for some Osprey eggs to hatch, a new word for Northumberland.Another word I remember from East Yorkshire is STOGGY or STOGGIE used to describe a Wood Pigeon.

To bray is to smack, feeling badly is to feel ill, faffing about is messing about and if you fettle something you have sorted it out or repaired it.I remember grandad saying he was 'all blattered up' when he came in muddy and wet.Finally, when I was in a teenage mood, mum would call me ' maungy', no idea how to spell it.

'A'm fair mafted' I am very hot, 'There's a 'mawk' in that apple' There is a maggot in that apple, 'Ah'l tret you' I'll treat you, 'Bags I foggy' I want to go first, 'E's right fond clever' He is full of his own importance.

About Me

My name is Susan Butler and I'm a local historian and genealogist with a particular interest in the Howden and Goole area of East Yorkshire. This blog is a place to share some of the old photographs, family stories and historical snippets that I've collected over the years. You can also contact me through my website Howdenshire History.